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So, there has been some controversy over the fact that our mummy Wilfred is being referred to by a man’s name because there is some suspicion that this mummy may in fact be female!

Just before Thanksgiving, Dr. Janet Monge, Keeper and Curator-in-Charge of the Museum’s Physical Anthropology Section, along with colleagues Page Selinsky and Francesca Candilio, took at peek at the mummy and there was a hot debate over some of the features on the pelvis, but they all started leaning toward the conclusion that the mummy may be a woman.

The group huddled around the mummy. Photo by Nina Owczarek, copied from the Museum’s Instagram feed.

The group felt like they needed to see the bones better. One of them (half-jokingly) asked if we could just lift the pelvis out. While we plan to take some new x-rays using our new digital radiography equipment, we have to do some work on the mummy in the lab first. But in the meantime, we can take a look at the x-rays taken in 1932 over at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The only notes from this old radiographic study say “adult”.

Dr. Monge offered to share these images with her colleague Dr. Morrie Kricun, Emeritus Professor of Radiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kricun was able to manipulate the image of the pelvis to view it as it would look like if it was undisturbed.

Manipulated radiographic image of the mummy’s pelvis

He’s also leaning toward female, but wants to do some additional imaging, which we plan to do soon. I promise to update the blog as soon as we do this! But for now, I feel like I may need to start calling this mummy Wilfreda.

I swear, sometimes I think we’re just trying to outdo ourselves. There has been a whirlwind of activity lately – in the museum, in the conservation department, and in the Artifact Lab. Between “finding” a 6500 year-old skeleton in storage, to moving into our new conservation suite, it’s been so busy that I haven’t been very good about writing updates (but I promise to post some of the stuff about our new digs and equipment on the blog soon). Just when I thought things were settling down, this mysterious crate showed up at my door:

Okay, so at this point, it wasn’t a complete mystery – I knew what was in that crate (more or less) because last summer, some brave souls in the Egyptian Section managed to get this crate down from a very high shelf in storage. Once it was down, they found this note pinned to the top of the box:

Well, hello, Wilfred. As you can see, the team was very happy with themselves afterward, even if they had to get a little dirty in the process.

So who/what is Wilfred, exactly? Well, inside the crate we found this:

It’s an old, dirty mattress, with a wooden stick resting on top. And inside that mattress, we found…

A mummy! A badly damaged, but nonetheless very well-preserved mummy.The upper half of the body is where most of the damage is visible, exposing the human remains underneath, while the lower half appears pretty well-wrapped.

Today, my colleagues and I hoisted Wilfred out of the crate onto a temporary support. Here is what he looks like, sitting out on a table in the lab:

And there’s more. But I won’t write any more about him in this post, except to say that no, this isn’t the first time he’s been studied since coming to the museum in 1911 (he was x-rayed in the 1930s), but it is the first time that any of us here at the museum are really getting a good look at him.

As promised, Tawahibre’s coffin lid is now on display, front and center, in the Artifact Lab.

Tawahibre’s coffin lid on display at the entrance to the Artifact Lab

Getting this Late Period painted wooden coffin lid ready for display required months of treatment to clean the surface and to stabilize the flaking paint, powdery and crumbly gesso, and loose wood components. I blogged rather extensively about the treatment – follow this link to view some of my previous posts.

Here are some treatment images that were posted on the museum’s Facebook page last week, showing details of the head/upper body before, during, and after treatment:

Come visit Tawahibre in the lab, where you can examine the coffin lid up-close, read the conservation treatment report (which includes some materials identification reports), see more before, during, and after treatment images, and discuss the treatment with the conservator during open window times.

We have had a very special object in the Artifact Lab for a few weeks – this Predynastic ritual vessel in the shape of a woman:

E12281, after treatment

This vessel was excavated at Abydos, and we estimate that it is at least 5000 years old.
Here is a view of the vessel from the top:

I have worked almost exclusively on organic materials in the Artifact Lab, so getting to work on this ceramic was a nice diversion. Conservation treatment, which involved some light surface cleaning and minor mending, was requested because this object will be featured in an upcoming publication. It will leave the lab today, but I didn’t want it to leave without posting an image of it on the blog! Once the publication comes out, I’ll be sure to include a link to it.

In the meantime, to learn more, follow this link to check out a video discussion of a similar vessel, in the collection at the Brooklyn Museum:

There is something I’ve mentioned before on this blog, but never actually shown, and that is the ability to “see” Egyptian blue on objects using multispectral imaging. On many objects Egyptian blue is very well-preserved, so there is no need for special examination techniques in order to spot it. But there are cases in which being able to accurately identify this pigment is important. Sometimes Egyptian blue deteriorates either by changing color (to green or black) or by becoming lost altogether, making it difficult to know which areas may have originally been blue, or if blue was used at all.

And then there are objects like this one:

Front view of the shabti box in normal lighting conditions

You’ve seen it before, it’s our painted wooden shabti box. I have been working on the treatment of this box for awhile now, mostly to stabilize the flaking paint and varnish. And this thick, orange-yellow varnish, which we believe is original, and is pistacia resin, makes it difficult to see the painted surface, both the details and the colors. While I could see that there is some green and possibly blue paint on this box, between deterioration of the paint and/or pigment, and the thick application of pistacia resin, I couldn’t say for sure which areas may have originally been painted blue…until now…

Taking advantage of the fact that Egyptian blue has luminescent properties when illuminated with visible light and captured in infrared, we can detect where Egyptian blue was applied. And wow, look at these results:

This is the same surface of the shabti box seen in the first photo, but zoomed in a bit, and taken under different lighting conditions and captured with a different camera. The areas that appear white are where Egyptian blue was applied. Because everything else pretty much disappears on the box in this image, to better visualize where the Egyptian blue is in relation to other details, we created a false-color image in Photoshop:

In this false color image, the areas that appear red are where the Egyptian blue was applied. It’s not perfect (you can see that the bands in the hair of the figure on the right don’t really show up) but we could play around with the photographs a bit to improve this.

We did this imaging on all surfaces of the box, and on the box lids. Here is a regular photo, a visible-induced IR luminescence photo, and a false color image of one of the box lids, also showing lots of Egyptian blue:

You can use any regular/visible light source to produce the luminescence, but in this case, we used our fancy-schmancy new Mini Crimescope, which was developed for forensic work, but is useful to us because it allows us to examine objects under specific wavelengths of UV and visible light. We found that using a peak emission 600nm light source worked best for the excitation of the Egyptian blue.

In order to “see” the luminescence, we have to capture images using a modified digital camera, with an 87C IR filter.

In summary, we’re having lots of fun with our new equipment, and finding that these Egyptian objects are perfect subjects for learning how to use the Crimescope and the modified camera, because they produce such great, dramatic images.

A long time ago I posted an image of our Mummy Gallery, circa 1930s. Well, I find myself returning to this photograph again and again as I work on new objects in the lab.

The “Mummy Room” ca. 1935

Can you find two of the objects that we’re working on right now, the beautifully preserved painted wooden coffin and the shabti box and shabits, all from the New Kingdom? Here are images of these objects, just to help you out:

Overall view of the interior of the coffin from above

The shabti box and one of its associated shabtis

Did you find them? I’ll post the image of the mummy room below, with these objects circled in red.

And here is a cropped version of this image, to better show these objects:

While it’s just cool to see an image of these objects in a previous display, it’s also helpful to me as a conservator. I can see how they were mounted for exhibit (the coffin is standing upright, the shabtis are on little platforms) and I can also get a sense of condition at this time (for instance, the middle lid of the shabti box is missing in this image, and I can see some losses to the painted surface as well).

I’m am nearly finished working on the shabti box and shabtis, and the coffin will also be completed this year, so we will finally be able to put these objects back on exhibit.

Coming up next week, I will be posting some multispectral images of the shabti box and shabtis, which is helping us better understand the original colors and also to see some of the painted details, which are now largely obscured by the orange pistacia resin varnish.

To put it into context, I was working on this painted wooden shabti, which I’ve mentioned on the blog before.

The area blocked out in yellow is the area I’m working on in the video.

Here is a still shot of the area I’m working on in the video, taken at 10x magnification using our binocular microscope:

The paint is actively flaking in many areas on this object. In the video, you can see me applying a 2% solution of methyl cellulose in water by brush to a loose flake of paint, and then after allowing the flake to relax, tapping it into place using a silicone colour shaper. It’s slow-going, but it’s working!

Everyone loves Tanwa, our child mummy, but a lot of people ask about her size. “Isn’t she kind of small for a 5-year-old?” they’ll ask. Without knowing a whole lot of 5-year-olds myself, I usually say, yes, I guess, but you have to remember that she’s wrapped really tightly and that people were generally smaller in stature 2000 years ago. We also don’t know how she died, so theoretically, her size could have been affected by a disease or something that eventually caused her to die. But the truth is, I don’t know how she compares to the size of kids today.

But today I had the perfect opportunity to size her up, and a willing subject, my niece Luisa. Luisa is “almost 4-years-old” (this is a direct quote). We held Luisa up next to Tanwa for a little height comparison.

Luisa is the tallest in her class and she’s “almost four”, and she’s just about the same height as Tanwa. So I would say that Tanwa isn’t so short after all. What do you think?

It is impossible not to see this object when you enter the Artifact Lab, as it’s front and center, and immediately impressive, due to its well-preserved painted details:

This is the lower-half of a late New Kingdom painted wooden coffin, that recently came up to the Artifact Lab. Our visitors are always commenting on how vibrant the colors are, and that is mostly based on what they can see from the exterior. But the interior of this coffin is fully decorated, and arguably even more impressive, and I promised some people this week that I’d post photos of the interior soon. Here they are:

Overall view of the interior of the coffin from above

View of the right side

View of the left side

View of the interior, top of the coffin

The only areas on the coffin that are not decorated are the exterior of the back, and both sides of the foot/base.

All in all, this coffin is in great condition, but it needs some treatment, including surface cleaning and stabilization of the wood and paint in some areas.

There are also a few mysterious things about it, in particular, these drilled holes in the back – what the heck are these all about?

Today was the launch of the Villanova CAVE. I’m a little confused about what CAVE stands for because in the opening remarks someone mentioned that it is “computer assisted virtual environment” but in all of the promotional materials about the CAVE it says that it stands for “CAVE automatic virtual environment”. In any case, it’s an 18′ x 10′ x 7.5′ high room with a configurable ceiling, where, with a pair of special glasses, you are immersed in a virtual experience, which could mean exploring areas closed to the public in Eastern State Penitentiary, walking through a plaza in Mexico, or looking inside a falcon mummy. And not just any falcon mummy, OUR falcon mummy, which is why I was at the opening today.

We found out about the CAVE several months ago, thanks to Dr. Michael Zimmerman, who introduced Lynn Grant and I to his colleague Dr. Frank Klassner. Dr. Klassner is the director of the CAVE, and is also a professor of Computing Sciences and director of the Center of Excellence in Enterprise Technology (CEET) at Villanova. Dr. Klassner was looking for collaborators who might be interested in exploring objects, places, or spaces using the CAVE. We had recently CT-scanned our falcon mummy, and offered to share that data with him.

After the opening remarks, we were allowed to enter the CAVE in groups of 15, where we put on the special glasses (which looked a lot like the 3D glasses you get in a movie theater) and we were shown some demos of the potential applications.

A glimpse inside the CAVE (we weren’t really supposed to take pictures, not that they could really capture what we could see with the glasses anyway)

They didn’t show the falcon mummy in my group, so I pulled the guy leading the demo aside (who turned out to be George Lacakes, Director of the Virtual Reality Laboratory at Rowan University), and put in a special request for the falcon. George told me that they hadn’t totally finished processing the CT-data because it needed a lot of work, so we couldn’t fully unwrap the falcon in the CAVE just yet, but we were still able to look at a portion of it (the CT-scan was captured in 2 different sections, so we were only looking at one) and peer inside to see the skeletal remains. I told Dr. Klassner that we’d just have to make a trip back once they finished processing all of the data, and he enthusiastically welcomed a return visit.

A section of the falcon mummy, viewed on George Lacakes’ computer, just to give you an idea of what the image looks like.

In addition to being able to explore objects and places through previously-captured data, the CAVE has a rover named Seymour (get it? because it helps you see more) which can capture images anywhere (like an archaeological site or the galleries of a museum) that can then be explored in the CAVE.

The development and construction of the CAVE was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Watch a time-lapse video of the CAVE being constructed, and read more about the CAVE here.